Chapter 15 Aurelie
The bridal nook smelled like my lavender perfume and old wood and the faint pepper of crushed olives drifting up from the press house. The sun was sliding toward the horizon, painting the hillside in colorful honeyed hues, as if the whole island had agreed to dim the lights just for us.
It gave lights out and away we go a whole new meaning.
Everyone had conspired to make today easy. That was the only word for it. It was easy in a way nothing in my life had ever been.
Colette handled permits and timing like she was arranging constellations, and truly I felt that some divine intervention had happened with her appearance in all of this.
Ivy built a schedule that ran like a Swiss watch and still left room to breathe.
Kimi became logistics, floating in the middle silently and perfectly to aid where needed.
Marco flirted a florist into surrendering her pink peonies and greens and then charmed the seamstress into staying an extra hour “for romance” to tailor mine and Callum’s wedding attire.
Lucy wrote a new song after drilling me and Callum for inspiration, but wouldn’t let us hear it.
Now, all he and I had to do was show up and mean it.
And we did. God, we did. We spent those stolen days and nights exactly how I dreamed we would: unhurried, greedy for each other, laughing like teenagers in love, yoga at sunset on the terrace while the Aegean waves crashed against the shore.
Kinky, yes, and intimate, too, with private dinners, shared showers, and lazy mornings that turned to afternoons because neither of us wanted to move.
Every time life tried to rush us, we told it no. And for once, it listened.
Nothing about mine and Callum’s love story had ever followed a script.
Rival teams, wrong timing, right souls anyway.
The engagement, the elopement, the decision to trade a ballroom for a ridge and plan a wedding in two days with only our people and the sea as witnesses, was far from conventional.
But some traditions we kept on purpose as tiny rituals that felt like roots.
We agreed on no first look, even though we parted this morning with a panty-melting kiss and the promise to see you where olive meets vine, on the ridge that made this sacred.
I didn’t want him to see me again until I was walking toward the life we’ve already been living, named out loud and bound on purpose.
That mattered to me because I wanted the moment to hit him clean—no cameras, no rehearsal, just the two of us choosing each other the way we survived everything else: face-to-face and heart-first.
Something old, something new, something borrowed, and something blue. We kept those traditions because both our mothers would cry if we didn’t, and because I wanted to honor the girl who used to dress her dolls with ribbons from the vineyard fence and dream of an elegant, romantic wedding.
Old and blue was the Fraser tartan. His parents’ handfasting strip, navy and midnight threaded with cream and grey.
Callum paid a frankly obscene rush fee to get it to Milos in under forty-eight hours; it arrived folded in tissue that breathed cedar and amber—warm, familiar notes that somehow live in the walls of our countryside house.
“That is not what my parents’ place smells like,” he’d muttered, which only made me laugh. “That’s practically identical to our house.”
“Then it already knows where it belongs,” I said softly. “On us.”
“Maybe it means the old ways approve, and that the tie knew where it would bind.”
“Your mother said to call it superstition if we want. She called it home recognizing home.”
Malina had FaceTimed me this morning with glassy eyes, thanking me for loving her son, for saving him when he wouldn’t save himself, for honoring a tradition that mattered, and for saying yes to their family as much as to him.
It wasn’t just fabric. It was their marriage—messy, mended, stubborn—and still standing after what should’ve broken it.
It was his lineage he once tried to tuck away, the boy who softened his accent and sanded down his edges now choosing to wear them like a badge of honor.
Tonight we’d bind our wrists with it as we vowed: a blessing of perseverance and forgiveness, of leaving and returning, of choosing each other when it’s easy and especially when it’s not.
A blue thread through the past, the present, and the future we were about to make.
New was the dress. It was an ivory, bias-cut slip in liquid silk charmeuse that skimmed instead of clung.
A shallow V at the front, barely-there spaghetti straps, and a draped cowl back that bared the whole golden line of my spine, yet somehow kept my tattoo hidden.
A floor-length with a quiet puddle of train.
No bra, no corsetry, just skin and silk and the audacity of feeling beautiful and wanted and chosen.
Borrowed was Colette’s gold olive-leaf comb tucked into my hair. It was half-up with loose, bouncy curls falling down my back. We pinned the veil beneath the twist so it could fly.
And the veil—oh, the veil—was an unapologetically dramatic, single layer of silk tulle, cathedral-length, raw-edged so the breeze could catch and lift it like a sail. Exactly the kind of wind-kissed spectacle the ridge begged for.
For extra blue, we tied a narrow ribbon the exact shade of Callum’s eyes around my bouquet.
Beneath the ribbon, Colette stitched a tiny lavender sachet to the stems, a talisman from the life I’d built before him, the fields I used to run through at home, the comfort I carried as I waited for my rival to arrive as my destiny.
The bouquet itself was pink peonies, like we’d always said, white ranunculus, and a fresh olive sprig Colette wired in at the last second. “Island superstition,” she’d said giddily. “Olive for peace, vine for plenty.” It looked like a promise that had learned how to grow.
Ivy’s voice floated in from the adjoining room off the tasting terrace, a little stone anteroom Colette called the “bridal nook,” with a picture window that framed the grove. “Ten minutes, Frenchie.”
“Copy,” I called, and my voice didn’t waver.
“You’re not in the car, darling,” she teased, appearing in my periphery in the doorway, her posh English accent curling around the pet name fondly and beautifully. “You don’t have to say ‘copy’.”
I laughed. “D’accord, I don’t have to say copy.
But you’ll always be my steady line, Ivy.
You walked into my life like you’d been there the whole time and somehow stitched our little chaos into a family.
You keep all of us in orbit. Like a mother hen with a dagger and an angel with a press badge.
You fight first and hold after. You’re the one who makes sure we eat, sleep, breathe, and don’t burn down the world out of spite—even if sometimes, it deserves it. ”
The old floorboards creaked under her as she stepped into the room. This was unfamiliar territory for us. Even though we talked about everything under the sun, we rarely talked about our feelings about each other. We didn’t need to, because our souls just… knew.
But today I was feeling particularly sappy and emotional. Probably had something to do with the fact that I was getting married to the love of my life. You know, just easy breezy stuff.
“You came when everything hurt, and you brought order that felt like love,” I continued, avoiding eye contact and wringing my hands in front of me, almost nervously.
But really, I was staving off tears. “You turned my panic into plans, my silence into sentences. You understand my edges, my storms and you never asked me to be smaller. You made room for me, then you kept me. If Callum is my home, you are my shelter. If he’s my vow, you’re the breath I take before I speak it.
“This friendship may have started as a way for us to mutually benefit professionally, but baby, you and I were always meant to collide. Not in a crash, but more like a rendezvous. We’re the impact turned alignment, two stubborn trajectories finally choosing the same sky.
So no, I don’t need to say copy. But I’ll keep saying this: merci, mon ami ame s?ur.
Thank you for choosing me to chase down.
You’re my forever friend, the poetry in our pain, and the headline I trust with my life. ”
I finally turned to look at her. Ivy wore a soft champagne slip dress that hit mid-calf.
A slim satin tie cinched her waist; a thin gold chain glinted at her throat.
Her dark hair was half-up in an easy twist, a few face-framing pieces brushing her cheeks.
Bare feet, pedicured toes, glossy lips, the press badge swapped for a dainty bracelet with a cross on top.
Her mouth trembled, then she huffed a laugh to save us both.
“God, Frenchie, can you say you love me without making me redo my mascara?” She swallowed, squared her shoulders, and went for levity.
She took one breath and blinked hard, composing herself.
“And okay, rude. How dare you look like a hand-painted sin?”
“Shut up, Brit. Just fix my veil and call me nice things,” I responded, laughing.
Eleni, Colette’s documentary-style photographer, hovered in the doorway with a soft smile, shooting on quiet film and staying invisible, the click of her shutter barely a whisper under the breeze.
She smoothed the tulle, tightened the comb, and pressed her cheek to mine for one long second. “Nice thing number one: you survived the impossible and then you built a life anyway. Nice thing number two: you picked the right man.”
My throat pinched. “I know,” I whispered. “God, I know.”